Empowerment For Managers
In order to empower people, you need to develop the creativity they already have but aren’t fully utilising!
Empowerment for Managers and the People They Manage
What exactly does Empowerment mean in the way it gets used these days?
“I want my people to be empowered.”
On the other hand, I might think it means:
“I want to be empowered in my job.”
Being Empowered
Both of us will mean something completely different when we use the empowerment word.
Empowerment For Managers
From a manager’s point of view, it usually means they want their staff to:
- be more proactive
- take increased responsibility
- contribute
- bring solutions, not problems
Empowerment For Employees
To employees, it usually means being:
- given more autonomy
- left alone to sort things out on their own
- able to make decisions
Empowerment is a Dangerous Thing
On the surface, those two points of view look compatible.
However, often they aren’t.
You see, just giving people more power can be a dangerous thing to do.
What if the other person doesn’t want what you want? How does empowering them help?
In fact, it’s more likely to make things worse as they go off on some wild tangent that wasn’t in your original plan.
Because you see all of us when we become more empowered will start to think and act differently.
Being Enlightened
When we work within business we think about empowerment as being enlightened beyond your time.
It’s going beyond the norm, it’s going beyond the traditional ways of doing things, it goes beyond the right way of doing things, but looking at how to move things forward, with the least amount of fuss and difficulty.
When you try to squash something into the right way of doing things, or to procedures that have to follow a rigid structure, then you’ll get into trouble.
Creativity and Innovation
However good procedures are, rigid adherence to any kind of process takes away creativity and innovation from individuals.
In order to empower people, you need to develop the creativity that people already have and perhaps aren’t fully utilising.
Using Initiative
You want to get people to a place where they feel able to suggest and offer things. And then start doing things, rather than waiting to be told what to do.
You want them to become leaders and delegators.
A real definition of empowerment will include things like:
- Involvement
- Accountability
- Encouragement
- Active participation
- Setting boundaries
- Clear expectations
- Active listening
- Acknowledging ideas
Put simply, empowerment means treating people as adults.
No matter who they are, what their role is, or where they sit in the hierarchy.
Empowerment for Managers and the People They Manage
Impact Factory runs
Open Performance Management Courses
Tailored Performance Management Training
and personalised
One-to-One Empowerment Skills Training
for anyone interested in
Performance Management
